Week one of JDILY LABS is done. Current stats: zero clients, zero revenue, one landing page, and a client portal that most established agencies don't have. I'm building this company in public — every week I'll share what shipped, what it cost, and what the numbers look like.
What shipped this week
- Landing page with a real offer — founding-client deal, guarantee, and six services I can actually deliver solo
- Client portal with auth — clients get credentials by email, change their password on first sign-in, and follow their project milestones live
- Sudo dashboard — I can create clients, manage their projects, post updates, and reset access without touching a database
- Contact pipeline — form submissions hit my inbox with auto-replies, powered by Resend
The stack is deliberately boring: Next.js, Neon Postgres, Drizzle, Better Auth, Resend, Vercel. Nothing experimental — the same stack I sell to clients, because I refuse to ship technology I haven't bet on myself.
What I learned
Building the portal before having a single client felt backwards — until I realized it's the sales pitch. When a founder asks 'how will I know what's happening with my project?', I don't describe a process. I send a login.
Don't tell clients about your process. Show them the door and hand them a key.
Next week
Outreach. Ten personalized messages a day to founders who need an MVP shipped, plus two more journal posts. If you're reading this because of one of those messages — hi, this is the transparency you can expect as a client.